Disguising a Detective
by ZPM
Summary: Fooling John Watson isn't easy but it can be done.


Author's Note: Response to anonymous prompt on the Sherlock_bbc meme:

"I really don't know why everyone seems to believe that Sherlock doesn't care about anyone, and that John was (partially) right to be disappointed in him when he didn't show his care about the people Moriarty strapped to his bombs. Didn't anyone notice the look on Sherlock's face after the old woman exploded? Or how he would have forced the confession out of the gallery woman to safe the child if he'd thought Moriarty would have accepted it?

So, basically, I want John to realise that, yes, Sherlock _does_ care about people, he just doesn't show it, or he just can't indulge in it when he is solving a crime because it would distract him too much or something like that. And I want John to feel guilty for accusing Sherlock of being callous, and doing/saying something to make amends for it."

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit. Quotes from Gatiss & Moffat.

* * *

John watched Sherlock's face as he appeared from behind the curtain. John isn't bad at reading people. He's actually quite good. When your life depends on being able to read a situation, whether to pull a trigger or not, or when someone else's life depends on your choice between two people, both injured, you get good at reading the split second expressions that ultimately determine your response. John, of course, knows while he's looking at the face of the latest client/victim and maybe their posture, gait and other body language, Sherlock will have picked up a hundred other things that will tell him how that person likes their tea, how they arrived where they are and what route they took.

Sherlock himself has always been easiest to read, mostly because John thinks he doesn't know how to lie. When confronted with the idea of his psychopathy by Sergeant Donovan, he stated his classification clearly as a "high functioning sociopath". No attempt to conceal the truth. John believed that right up until the moment Sherlock started to wheedle his way into Van Coon's apartment with just the right amount of cajoling and pleading injected into his tone. Since then he's realised that Sherlock can lie, and does so, very effectively, when he wants.

But John is still fairly confident that he can still read Sherlock. Admittedly, John was thrown by Sherlock's tears when he interviewed the grieving widow. But in hindsight, he's more surprised that he was taken in by her act; Sherlock, he knew was acting. He knew from the first day he met Sherlock that although mad, he was strangely likeable and quite charming. He still thinks Sherlock is fundamentally truthful but now he realises this is not because Sherlock doesn't know how to lie, but because he simply cannot be bothered – to disguise his brilliance, his talent and his boredom. It isn't worth the effort. Sherlock will lie only when it achieves a particular purpose and John is satisfied that he's got that part of Sherlock's character squared away, at least in his own mind.

* * *

It doesn't surprise him that Sherlock has solved the mystery of the third pip but when he thinks of that poor, old blind woman somewhere in the heart of London, alone, terrified and living at the whim of a madman, his anger at Sherlock for leaving her to suffer those extra hours is so great that he can't even look at his face when the call is made. He tracks the conversation though and he knows the moment she is no more. He feels the anger again, but this time it's more fairly directed at the bomber. When he looks at Sherlock's face, it's blank. John thinks there is some annoyance behind that expression – it must bug him to solve the mystery but still to have lost the game. This sad realisation is confirmed by their brief chat back at the flat.

It's a source of keen disappointment when Sherlock seems unconcerned for the lives jeopardised by the actions of Moriarty, albeit his identity unknown at that time. Moriarty sees it as a game, lives won and lost like the throws of a die and it sickens John when Sherlock's behaviour seems to mirror the same view. Sherlock is maddeningly blasé about it all - sitting there, folded into himself with the pink phone on the arm of the couch - caught up in his own brilliance (again) and waiting for a chance to shine once more. Through Sherlock's short speech denying the existence of heroes, John chastises himself - Sherlock's a self-professed sociopath and his behaviour is perfectly text book.

John's disappointment lingers but is now directed inwards for deceiving himself as to Sherlock's capacity to care. He can't quite shake the bitterness that sinks into his gut with the realisation that Sherlock could no more care about him, if he was strapped to a bomb, than for that old lady.

* * *

Standing there with the pale light reflecting off the pool and uplighting the tiles, the ceiling and Sherlock in an aqua hue, John sees in his eyes and on his face a whole kaleidoscope of emotions - shock, confusion, betrayal, denial, pain, relief, some intense feeling he can't identify aimed at himself and worry, before a seemingly neutral façade drops down over his features. It's a second that lasts and lasts and John's anger for Moriarty at that moment is fathomless but his fear, his fear has mutated, it's no longer for himself.

Moriarty makes his appearance and the last game is playing out and all John can think about is getting Sherlock away and keeping him safe. He knows he'll die to keep Sherlock alive. He feels regret that he never owned to being anything more than a colleague to Sherlock, regrets denying the designation from Sherlock's own lips before Sebastian Wilkes. But actions speak louder than words, Sherlock will understand. Then the red light flickers onto Sherlock's forehead and that terrible, self-sacrificing plan is over before it can be set in motion. Moriarty is mad, quite mad, but no fool. He has planned for this eventuality. Sherlock has a gun and while John knows his aim isn't great on upward trajectories with the target ten metres or more away, there is no way he'll miss Moriarty. They'll both die but they'll take him out and John can live with that. Indeed, he won't have that long to live with it. It's a soldier's death; an honourable death and that has meaning to John. Still, he doesn't want to die, so he waits for what seems like the impossible - that Moriarty will make a mistake.

* * *

"People are dead."

"That's what people do!"

Moriarty is shouting now, Sherlock has him rattled. Good.

"I will burn the heart out of you."

More grandstanding but the snipers haven't moved. John wonders if perhaps Sherlock can keep him talking, delay him, Mycroft will turn up and offer his unique brand of assistance - surely he's got Sherlock under surveillance?

"I've been reliably informed that I don't have a heart."

"But we both know that's not true."

Sherlock's gaze has flickered across to meet John's; his expression is unreadable. Moriarty is walking away and it's all over. Suddenly John can feel the air in his lungs and his heart pounding in his ears and Sherlock's almost tearing off the hideous parka and sliding it to the end of the pool. All John's energy leaves him and he leans against the edge of the changing cubicle to slow his descent to the floor. When he looks at Sherlock, he's pacing, as much as one can pace in the four feet between the cubicles and the pool edge, and he's scratching his temple with the muzzle of the gun.

* * *

Afterwards, when John is ensconced safely in his armchair in Baker Street with a cup of Mrs Hudson's tea warming his hands, thinking back over the evening, it's neither Moriarty nor the snatch-and-grab his men pulled on him that he focuses on but Sherlock at that instant in time. It was the first time John had seen Sherlock behave that way, like he was too distracted to even think. Then John recalls seeing him when he couldn't think during Lestrade's first fake drugs bust - when there was too much of everything – too much noise and chatter – and Anderson's face was distracting him. This was similar and it's then that John recognises the difference. The distraction this time came from within Sherlock. It strikes him that the Detective's disjointed and not very fluently conveyed appreciation immediately after were borne from his feeling of gratitude and not cool rationality. Sherlock's always been very eloquent in his displays of logic, even when he's lambasting the police force for their ideas, work ethic and intelligence. This was far from that but John wouldn't trade the honesty of those words for the finest oratory.

John watches Sherlock, stretched out on the couch on the other side of the room, eyes closed in his thinking pose, his tea steadily cooling on the coffee table. He recalls all the observations he has made of Sherlock on his blog and in his thoughts and how many times Sherlock himself has contradicted the conclusions drawn from them. That Sherlock isn't the sociopath he claims to be is clear to John now. The reason why Sherlock says he is, when he is smart enough to know that he is not, is less so.

When the old lady died, John never saw Sherlock's expression. He rethinks their conversation at the flat now. John considers Sherlock having two modes: animated and bored. But Sherlock was neither that day; he was motionless, burrowing down into his coat, as if it could shield him from the world, and trying to make himself as small as possible. That he felt the death as a professional failure was obvious but John felt driven to impress upon Sherlock that people were dying. And then it hits John, Sherlock's own words at the pool: "People are dead". In that instant, John knows that his error as to Sherlock's character has resulted in a more serious misjudgement of the man. It's as bad, if not more so, than those Donovan, Anderson and even Lestrade make and have made, because he should have known better: he is Sherlock's colleague and his friend. Strangely, it's not an epiphany for John, he saw this all along, saw but did not observe.

He feels like the idiot Sherlock claimed he is, not because he was fooled by Sherlock's single greatest disguise, as most of the London police force are, but because he wrongly thought Sherlock wouldn't care if he was one of Moriarty's victims. John knows that this doesn't make sense at all because falling for the guise meant inevitably making that misjudgement but he has long been reconciled to the irrationality of his feelings. The guilt burns inside him, as crippling as any bullet. He should have seen it, he who ran with Sherlock, fought for him, killed for him and almost died for him. It's galling that even Moriarty saw Sherlock's heart before John did; Moriarty, the one person it was imperative to fool and who wasn't.

Sherlock does care, probably too much, if his reaction at the pool was any indicator and he cares for John. Because of this one clear undeniable truth, it doesn't matter to John what Sherlock's reason is. Despite the guilt, he finds himself smiling and when he looks into his teacup and then at Sherlock, he finds his grey eyes open, his gaze on him and his face breaking into an answering smile.


End file.
